Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board

Immuno-oncology

Professor Lewis L. Lanier

Professor Lewis Lanier is an American Cancer Society Professor, a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Professor of the Cancer Research Institute at the University of California San Francisco, and Co-Leader of the Cancer, Immunity, and Microenvironment Program of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lanier received his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. After his postdoctoral studies, first at the Lineberg Cancer Center at the UNC, Chapel Hill and then as a Damon Runyon – Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fellow at the University of New Mexico, he joined the Research & Development Department at the Becton Dickinson Monoclonal Center in Mountain View, California, advancing to Associate Director of Research and was a Becton Dickinson Research Fellow.

In 1990, he joined the DNAX Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Palo Alto, California, where he advanced to Director of Immunobiology. In 1999, Dr. Lanier joined the faculty of UCSF School of Medicine in San Francisco.

His research group studies Natural Killer (NK) cells, which recognize and eliminate cells that have become transformed or infected by viruses. In recognition of his scientific contributions he was awarded the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute in New York in 2002. In 2005 he was given the Rose Payne Award for contributions to the field of Immunogenetics by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, in 2010 he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and in 2011 was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology by the American Society for Microbiology and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the 2001 Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of Immunologists and served as President of the American Association of Immunologists (2006-2007).

He has published more than 400 scientific articles and is a Senior Editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, and has also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Immunology, Annual Review of Immunology, Immunological Reviews, Tissue Antigens, Human Immunology, Immunogenetics, and Immunity. Dr. Lanier serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of several pharma and biotech companies and research institutes.

Ph.D. (Microbiology and Immunology), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Viral Vector Engineering

Professor Alexander A Khromykh

Professor Alexander Khromykh has almost 30 years experience in molecular virology. He has focused primarily on determining mechanisms of replication of encephalitic flaviviruses, particularly West Nile virus (WNV), studying WNV-host interactions and developing novel vaccine approaches. He is the main inventor of the WNV replicon-based vectors for vaccine and cancer therapy applications. Khromykh is currently a Professor of Virology at the University of Queensland, an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow, and a Deputy Director of the Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre.

PhD, Institute of Molecular Biology at the State Centre for Virology and Biotechnology, Koltsovo, Russia.

Professor Edward Mocarski

Professor Mocarski serves as the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Microbiology & Immunology in the Emory Vaccine Center of Emory University and is also Professor Emeritus and former Chair of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University. He also served as a Distinguished Fellow at MedImmune, a division of AstraZeneca, involved in the company’s vaccine pipeline research. Dr. Mocarski’s research has focused on the biology, pathogenesis and latency of cytomegalovirus (CMV), an opportunistic herpesvirus; in particular, on integrating biochemical, molecular, cellular and intact animal approaches to investigate the biological properties of this virus and its close relatives. He has made key contributions to the identification of replication functions, latent reservoir in myelomonocytic progenitors, immunomodulatory functions, and cellular response to viral infection. His research has also opened dramatic new understanding of cell death pathways in host defence where he has discovered that mammalian cell death machinery can be dysregulated to cause developmental failures and trigger inflammatory disease. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed articles and received an AB from Rutgers University and a PhD from the University of Iowa, both in Microbiology.

Programmed Cell Death and Necroptosis

Associate Professor Siddharth Balachandran

Associate Professor Siddharth Balachandran is Co-leader of Blood Cell Development and Function Program at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Immunology and Molecular Pathogenesis from Emory University in 2001 and, after Postdoctoral work at the University of Miami School of Medicine, joined Fox Chase in 2007 as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2014. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Immunology at Temple and Drexel Universities. Professor Balachandran’s laboratory studies how microbial and viral infections activate host innate immunity, with a focus on the role of cell death in these processes. His laboratory is particularly interested in a form of programmed cell death termed necroptosis, and seeks to exploit this form of immunogenic death for the treatment of human disease, whether infectious, inflammatory, or malignant.

Professor Balachandran currently serves, or has served, on the Editorial Boards of the journals Molecular and Cellular Biology, Cytokine, and Frontiers in Cell Death and Survival.

Dr Douglas R. Green

Douglas R. Green is the Chair of the Department of Immunology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN, a position he has held since 2005. Prior to that he was head of the Division of Cellular Immunology at La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology in La Jolla, CA.

Dr. Green’s laboratory studies many aspects of cell death and survival, including molecular pathways of cell death in cancer and the immune system, the clearance of dying cells, and the role of metabolism in the immune response. His contributions to the understanding of the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis, the process of necroptosis and its regulation, and the discovery and characterization of LC3-associated phagocytosis, among other findings, have resulted in the publication of over 500 research papers and reviews. Dr. Green is listed as an Institute of Scientific Information “highly-cited” scholar, both in Immunology and in Molecular Biology. Dr Green completed his PhD at Yale University.

Professor Edward Mocarski

Professor Mocarski serves as the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Microbiology & Immunology in the Emory Vaccine Center of Emory University and is also Professor Emeritus and former Chair of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University. He also served as a Distinguished Fellow at MedImmune, a division of AstraZeneca, involved in the company’s vaccine pipeline research. Dr. Mocarski’s research has focused on the biology, pathogenesis and latency of cytomegalovirus (CMV), an opportunistic herpesvirus; in particular, on integrating biochemical, molecular, cellular and intact animal approaches to investigate the biological properties of this virus and its close relatives. He has made key contributions to the identification of replication functions, latent reservoir in myelomonocytic progenitors, immunomodulatory functions, and cellular response to viral infection. His research has also opened dramatic new understanding of cell death pathways in host defence where he has discovered that mammalian cell death machinery can be dysregulated to cause developmental failures and trigger inflammatory disease. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed articles and received an AB from Rutgers University and a PhD from the University of Iowa, both in Microbiology.

Professor John Silke

Professor John Silke is the Joint Division Head of Cell Signalling and Cell Death at the Walter Eliza Hall Institute. His lab investigates proteins that can regulate both inflammation and cell death and how these proteins contribute to inflammatory diseases including psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, as well as cancer.

Professor Silke’s research focuses on cell death mechanisms and in particular the role of Inhibitor of Apoptosis proteins (IAPs) in regulating cell death. His laboratory at WEHI has made major contributions to understanding the apoptosis and necroptosis programmed cell death pathways, and their intersection with cancer and inflammation. In this capacity he has also contributed to dissecting how IAP antagonist drugs (Smac-mimetics) kill cancer cells and was involved in the development of a well-tolerated Smac-mimetic (Birinapant). Professor Silke collaborates closely with the Chemical Biology division at WEHI to generate novel small molecule drug like compounds to investigate the basic biology but also to treat human diseases.

Professor Silke completed a law degree in King’s College, London, before obtaining a second degree in Biochemistry at Churchill College, Cambridge. This was followed by a PhD in Zürich, Switzerland, with Prof. Walter Schaffner, looking at the role of DNA methylation in the regulation of transcription. He received a Swiss post-doctoral fellowship enabling him to work with Prof. David Vaux at the WEHI.

Clinical

Professor Rodney Sinclair

Professor Rodney Sinclair is Professor of Dermatology at the University of Melbourne and Director of Epworth Dermatology. He is Past-President of the Australasian Society for Dermatology Research, the Australasian Hair and Wool Research Society and the Skin and Cancer Foundation of Victoria.

Prof Sinclair is the co-author of the section on Dermatology in the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, Rook’s Textbook of Dermatology and Bologna’s Dermatology. He is lead author of Therapeutic Guidelines- Dermatology and has over 500 research publications.

Prof Sinclair convened the World Congress of Cosmetic Dermatology in Melbourne in 2006 and the World Congress of Hair Research in Cairns in 2010. He also convened the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australasian Society for Dermatology research each year from 1999-2012. He is Secretary General of the International Society of Dermatology Congress scheduled to be held In Melbourne in 2021.

In 2012 Professor Sinclair published an article on Skin Cancer prevalence and cost in Australia in the Medical Journal of Australia that triggered a Commonwealth House of Representatives Parliamentary enquiry entitled Skin Cancer in Australia: Our National Cancer that reported in 2015.